


didn't come for a fight

by inlovewithnight



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Animal Traits, Cuddling & Snuggling, Gen, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 01:10:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9524882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: "Musth or must  is a periodic condition in bull (male) elephants, characterized by highly aggressive behavior and accompanied by a large rise in reproductive hormones." (source)(when you get talking about Other Animal Traits That Could Be Used In Fanfiction and instead of forgetting about it, you write it.)





	

It was inevitable. Losing both assistant captains, the turnover in the roster in general; there was no way it wasn’t going to happen. The dominance order was all up in the air. 

Tyler could feel it, the rising tension, the way the guys were starting to circle each other. Jamie’s injury didn’t help, of course. The top guy being consistently less than 100% for months, and still not there once musth season started. Add a little extra stress and frustration from their record refusing to shake out the way they expected it to…

Well. Inevitable.

Tyler wasn’t a dominant, so this wasn’t his problem, thank god. There were a handful of other non-dominants in the room, plus Big Rig, whose injury kept him out of it; his body knew it couldn’t keep up with a dominance struggle, so it didn’t bother firing the cylinders. They all got to sit back and keep their mouths shut and watch everybody else go into musth like a bunch of idiots. Big, scary idiots. 

Everybody learned about musth in dynamic ed growing up. It started with talking about how it worked in elephants and camels, then mapped it onto humans. Tyler thought it was all really weird, and was relieved when his body didn’t express dominant traits, but he learned the patterns just like everybody else. 

Musth didn’t have anything to do with sex. Fucking somebody who was in musth was an excellent way to get some bones broken, actually. It was all about sorting out dominance, putting everybody in order by brute force. In elephants, testosterone levels could go up to sixty times normal during musth. Humans didn’t go quite that hard, but still, seeing the biggest and strongest guys go into it was impressive and terrifying and kinda hot.

Another thing elephants did that people thankfully didn’t: drip pee the whole time. That would really make the locker room a disaster area. People in musth _smelled_ , though, this unbelievable heavy musky scent that made non-dominants dizzy and warned them to clear the area.

Tyler badly wanted to clear the area right now. He could smell Jamie coming from the showers after practice, a wave of foreboding leading the way into the locker room. Some of the other guys, the ones who must be closest to tipping over themselves, lifted their heads and sniffed deeply. Tyler caught Big Rig’s eye and shook his head. This was gonna suck.

Jamie came through the door and stopped, standing there with his towel around his waist, water dripping onto the floor. He looked around the room slowly and then made a sound, that fucking… _sound_ people in musth made, low and raw and full from the chest. It wasn’t quite a bellow or a moan, it wasn’t quite a roar, it definitely wasn’t a growl. Tyler never could decide what to call it. It was just the sound of that time of year.

Jamie waited another minute, glaring at the guys who met his gaze until they looked away, and then stomped over to his locker. Tyler scooted a few extra inches out of his way, just in case. As a non-dominant, he shouldn’t even be on Jamie’s radar right now, but getting in the way was a bad idea. Sometimes a person in musth would decide to just plow right through anything between themselves and where they wanted to go.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Jamie said, his voice thick and rough, like the words had to fight to get out of his throat. Tyler immediately dropped his gaze to the floor. “Segs. Don’t act like I’m weird.”

“You’re not weird. I know.” Tyler smiled, keeping his eyes down. Direct eye contact might trigger a punch in the face despite Jamie’s apparent best intentions. “You’re just going through your thing right now.”

“Don’t talk about it like that!” Tyler winced, but Jamie sounded more petulant than mad. He turned and sat down hard, glaring across the room again. Tyler followed his gaze and bit back a sigh. 

Rous glared right back at Jamie, that sound starting up deep in his chest. Big Rig moved before Tyler had to, heading for the door to get the trainers. Musth fights never ended without someone needing to be patched up, and usually both of them. In this case, definitely both of them. Rous and Jamie were both aggressive when they _weren’t_ in musth. This annual tradition of trying to kill each other because hormones said to turned everything up to eleven.

Rous attacked, coming across the locker room at a run, and Jamie met him halfway. There was the heavy sound of flesh hitting flesh, the musth-bellow coming up from both of their chests, and then the sharper, faster sounds of punches, all echoing off the walls and ceiling until it made Tyler dizzy. The sound was nothing compared to the smell, though. Their temporal glands had opened up, spilling sweet-sour discharge that combined with the musky odor coming off the rest of them to almost make the scent visible in the room. Tyler’s entire nervous system was screaming at him to get out, and the other non-dominants on the team—Oduya, Nemeth, Kari—looked as uncomfortable as he felt.

They were still hockey players, though. Still team. So they all gripped the edge of the benches and didn’t budge.

The other dominants weren’t moving, either, but that was because they were all watching so closely Tyler wasn’t totally sure they remembered to breathe. The only proof was when Rous drew first blood and they all inhaled sharply, the coppery smell hitting them deep down and getting their engines going even faster. 

The trainers hurried in behind Big Rig just as Jamie nailed Rous in the jaw with a fierce punch that sent Rous stumbling backward and falling over the bench. Jamie didn’t let that be the end of it, but bellowed and charged, kicking viciously and trying to pin Rous against the bench so he could beat on him without resistance.

Oduya got up then, stepping toward them and angling his body so that when Jamie looked up, he could steer his gaze away from Rous. “Benny, hey, big guy, big Benn, that’s enough. You got him. You’re the boss, you win. He knows his place now, yeah?”

Jamie stopped moving, breathing hard and bent over Rous on the bench. After a moment he lifted his head and tracked Oduya with his eyes, a low rumble of warning deep in his chest. At least right now, if he went for Johnny, the trainers were close enough to get a syringe in him and slow him down. The rest of the room was holding absolutely still, waiting for it.

Oduya took a few slow steps to the side, and Jamie’s body turned to follow him, the rumble starting to rise toward another bellow. Two of the trainers rushed in and pulled Rous away; the third one, Gina, a dominant herself, moved in behind Jamie with a syringe in her hand.

Jamie came to a stop, though, blinking hard and licking the blood from his lip. “Anybody else?” he said hoarsely. “Anybody else got something to prove right now?”

Tyler saw Sharpy start forward, then settle back in his seat. It figured he’d have ambitions. 

But nobody stepped up, and Jamie nodded in satisfaction, wiping the back of his hand over his face and leaving streaks of blood behind. “’s what I thought. You can all come at me tomorrow. I’ll be ready. This is my team.”

That was a pretty dramatic way to wrap up practice, but at least there wasn’t another fight. Tyler finished getting changed and ended up walking out of the locker room alongside Jordie, who also had that musky scent coming off his skin.

“You want to crash at my place?” Tyler asked, stopping himself from the casual shoulder check that would normally accompany the question. “So you and Jamie don’t beat on each other for three days?”

Jordie smiles a little, shaking his head. “Nah, we’ll be all right. I figured out it was coming and went on restriction, it’ll be over quick for me and I won’t get bad enough for him to feel threatened. We’ll push each other around a little, nothing bad.”

“Oh, shit.” Going on restriction was the only way to cut musth back and dial it down. If the body didn’t have enough energy to produce all those extra hormones and fight for a week and a half, it would just give up on it. Useful little safety valve to keep them from starving to death if there weren’t enough calories around to support that kind of thing. Unfortunately, athlete diets were basically _designed_ to support that kind of thing. “So you’re on veggies and water, and he’s…”

Jordie rolled his eyes. “Last night he had four burgers and half a cake.”

“Why not the whole cake?”

“He got distracted and went off to move all the furniture in the living room.”

That sounded about right. “Sorry, dude. You’re welcome at mine any time if you change your mind.”

“Thanks, Segsy.” Jordie sighed and looked at his watch. “Gonna be days of this, you know. Until people stop challenging him.”

“Maybe nobody else will. Maybe Rous was enough.” Tyler knew that was not going to be the case. That wasn’t how hockey players worked. It wasn’t how dominants worked in general, but _especially_ dominants who also competed for a living.

Jordie just shook his head again and walked off to his car, leaving Tyler alone on the pavement. He looked up as some of the guys came out of the building, shoving and snarling at each other until they had enough room to spread out. Great. It was gonna be a great week in the room.

**

Things could be worse. In elephants, the cycle could take up to three months. The Stars generally make it in and out again in two weeks.

But those two weeks were a goddamn mess. Three more guys challenged Jamie, and they all get beaten back down into the floor. He broke Eaves’ nose. The non-dominants had to team up to keep Sharpy from challenging, because the last thing he needed was to get re-concussed by Jamie going overboard to prove he was still the boss.

Jamie, Sharpy, and Rous were all hormone scratches for every game until they came out of it, which meant the team had to do some call-ups from Cedar Park. Most of them went okay, but one poor dominant kid who was still giving off juvenile scent left and right took one look at Jamie and asked to be sent back down again. Tyler couldn’t blame him for not being ready to deal with the midwinter locker room, but it meant that they skated that night’s game short a forward, and they lost.

A handful of dominants--Jordie, Spezza, Johns--caught themselves in time to starve it out. They looked bad for a few days, all gray-skinned and sunken-eyed, until their bodies gave up, and then they slowly got back to normal. The guys who went through it all the way looked completely awful by the second week. Their faces were swollen from water retention and bruised from fighting, their eyes glazed, their bodies puffy in some places and gaunt in others. They smelled like piss and temporal fluid. Being around teammates in late musth wasn’t Tyler’s favorite thing at all.

He sat next to Sharpy on the bus from the airport to the hotel on the road trip for Sharpy’s first game back. He smelled almost normal; a faint tang of temporal secretion, but it’s not overwhelming. Mostly just sweat and hair product.

“Don’t sniff me, Segs.” Sharpy looked up from his phone and gave Tyler a half-smile. “If you’re thinking about going for a challenge, you’re a couple days late.”

“Not me, dude.” Tyler shook his head. “Thank god.”

Sharpy chuckled. “Don’t pretend you don’t wish you were dominant.”

“You think I want to go through that mess every winter? No way. Not my style. I prefer, you know. Being able to hang on to some dignity.”

Sharpy cocked his head, his smile fading into puzzlement. “But it cuts your career off. You can’t be a leader.”

That stung, but Tyler was used to it. He had worked through his feelings. “I also don’t get my head pounded into the locker room floor, and I get a couple extra games every year over you guys. I’ll take it, believe me.”

“Guess I can’t argue with that.” Sharpy settled back in his seat and closed his eyes.

Tyler couldn’t help being a little bit spiteful. “Plus I get to just have a skill decline when I get older, instead of skill decline _and_ getting the crap kicked out of me so I drop to the bottom of the team.”

“Ouch.” Sharpy opened his eyes again and blinked at him. “Way to rub it in, Segs.”

“Sorry. I guess that was harsh.”

“Accurate, though.” Sharpy’s mouth twisted in a tiny smile. “I tell you what, though—while you’re up? While you’re winning the fights? It’s so fucking good.”

**

Tyler thought about that conversation often in the next few weeks, while their record kept bouncing around and Jamie was listed on injured reserve. Tyler thought maybe that would help, that getting some real rest and quiet time would snap Jamie out of the moody funk he’d been in. 

It did not help. Jamie was fussy and irritable, stuck in the ugly mindset of post-musth with apparently no intention of cycling out of it again. Even Jordie was starting to lose patience and avoid him.

As a non-dominant, Tyler had a better chance than most at coaxing Jamie out of it. He knew the things that would typically help: good hearty meals, with a balance of stuff instead of a focus on sweet and fatty like the body craved during musth; plenty of rest; and distractions from the urge to brood and sulk—somewhere to put all that energy that had gone toward fighting.

It was difficult to get Jamie to to go along. Jamie was an uncooperative asshole who preferred inertia on his best day, and a post-musth slump was light years away from his best. Tyler was a _stubborn_ asshole, though, with an endless capacity for restaurants, naps, and bars. They were meeting on equal ground here.

“Why are you on such a restaurant kick?” Jamie asked, frowning at his plate of artfully arranged greens and beautifully sliced salmon. “Are we getting dessert too?”

“I’m trying to learn about good food instead of being a cliché.” Tyler refilled Jamie’s wine glass and lightly kicked him under the table. “But because I am a cliché at heart, we’re still going clubbing after this.”

“I don’t want to go clubbing. I want to go home.”

“Jamie. You gotta get out of the house, or Jordie is going to strangle you.”

“He wouldn’t!” Jamie scowled more and shoved a forkful of greens into his mouth. It gave him a definite resemblance to a cow chewing its cud, which Tyler desperately wanted to comment on. In this mood, though, there was a chance he would end up getting strangled himself. Fuckin’ post-musth slump.

“You only have to stay out for an hour,” he said instead. “Okay? Compromise?”

Jamie chewed some more and nodded, blinking down at his plate. “I guess. Okay. This is good.”

“The sauce, right?” Tyler gave himself a mental high-five. Green stuff and protein. Step one achieved. “The sauce is killer.”

Jamie took another bite and settled back in his chair, some of the tension easing from his shoulders. Tyler refilled his own wineglass in celebration. He might get his captain through this yet.

**

If the team had gone on a solid win streak with Jamie out, it would have been possible to keep him out longer. The way they stayed inconsistent meant he couldn’t relax and take his time getting better; he just got anxious and demanded to be back in the lineup as soon as possible. And since they really did need him, the coaches caved, with Tyler’s secret recovery plan only half-done.

Jamie got tired and cranky again very quickly. Jamie started acting like an asshole again _very quickly_. The d-men took a vote on pushing him out of the plane on the way to Buffalo, and that was only his third game back.

Tyler’s stomach was in knots from the first puck drop. It wasn’t exactly a surprise when Jamie lost his temper and started snapping sticks; his control had been visibly fraying, but even if Tyler hadn’t been watching for that, the smell coming off him made it clear. Sour, rotten-around-the-edges post-musth hormonal mess. The Sabres were aware of it, too, and if they weren’t directly challenging him they also weren’t cutting him any slack.

“Lucky it wasn’t worse, really,” he muttered to Rous on their way down the tunnel. “He could’ve gone after somebody’s neck instead of his sticks.”

Rous glanced up to make sure Jamie was out of earshot, tracking him with his eyes for a moment. “Probably should have been a hormone scratch tonight.”

“Ha. He just got back.”

“Yeah, he’s not injured, but he’s still all…” Rous waved one hand. “It’s bad, when this happens. When the mood won’t clear. You know?”

Tyler didn’t know; he wasn’t a dominant, he didn’t go through this. “I guess so.”

“Well, he either needs to sit or clear his mood.” Rous nodded decisively, like it was a simple thing. “Someone should help him.”

“You mean challenge him to a fight? One last blowout to get it out of his system?”

Rous shrugged, his attention drifting as they clomp across the room to their stalls. “A fight or a fuck, I suppose, some people it’s one and some it’s the other. Ah, this fucking tape, what a mess.”

Tyler went to his own seat, tugging his sweater off and giving himself a minute to slump and breathe. A fight or a fuck. Of course. What else? Their lives were all about fighting and fucking anyway, weren’t they? It was goddamn philosophical, almost.

The rest of the game was dismal and predictable. Nobody talked to Jamie in the room afterward, warned off by the look on his face and the fact that his smell had gotten even worse, dark and ugly with barely suppressed rage. Tyler wished the media luck in dealing with that and made his way over to Jordie’s stall.

Jordie glanced up from picking the tape off his socks. “Good game, man.”

“Eh.” Tyler shrugged and glanced around, as if he could’ve missed it if Jamie had come back. “So, Rous said something about Jamie and I want to run it by you.”

“He’s being an asshole. I know.”

“He’s stuck in post-musth. He needs some help getting out of it. Does fighting or fucking help more?” He faltered slightly at Jordie’s look. “In Jamie’s particular case. What? You know him better than anybody!”

“That’s kind of personal information, Segs.”

“Somebody has to snap him out of it or he’s going to get himself suspended. We don’t have time for that.”

Jordie exhaled roughly, dragging one hand through his hair. “I guess you’re right about that. Um. I honestly don’t know what works better for him. We don’t talk about that kind of stuff. But he’s been in a nasty fucking mood and looking for trouble and that’s not helping. Breaking shit didn’t help. So I’m gonna guess that he doesn’t need a fight.”

“Fuck.” Tyler slumped on the bench. “That was the easy one.”

“There’s another option, you know.” Jordie gave him a significant look. 

“What, chaining him to a wall until he sweats it out?”

“No. That would take too long.” Jordie rolled his eyes. “If he’s stuck, he’s probably feeling insecure and weird, right? Not sure of his place. So he needs reassurance.”

“Oh!” Of course. Tyler needed to brush up on his dominant-behavior theory, obviously. “We need to fake being a real herd?”

Jordie looked a little offended; right, dominants didn’t consider this stuff silly or over-the-top at all. “Not _fake_ it. I mean. We like each other and stuff. We’re a team.”

“Yeah. A good team.” 

“If you’re going to be sarcastic about this it’s not going to work.”

“I’m not! I promise.” Tyler grabbed Jordie’s knee and squeezed lightly. “You get him in his room waiting and I’ll round up the guys, okay? We’ll take care of all of this. You’re so smart, Darth. You’ll be a good leader someday.”

“I’m a good leader _now_ , Segs.”

“I know! I just meant, like.” God, soothing dominants’ insecurities was the worst. “I’m gonna go start spreading the word, okay? Text me when you get Jamie in his room and settled down. I’ll handle everything else.”

**

He couldn’t get the whole team, but he rounded up a decent number and dragged them back to the hotel instead of letting them head out to dinner or grabbing drinks. They had an early curfew, but ordering room service and all eating together with Jamie would actually make the team bonding even better. Sharing food was _important_ to dominants, and the rest of them could play along happily, because hey, dinner. Wherever it came from, dinner was good.

Jordie answered the door to Jamie’s room, looking around the group of them for a headcount and then giving Tyler an approving nod. “Thanks for coming around, guys. He’s being a dick about it but that’s pretty typical. You know what to do.”

They all nodded; nobody got to the NHL without being plenty familiar with dominant leader moods and how to soothe them.

Spezza went in first, walking with his head up but his eyes averted. Jamie was sitting on the bed, arms folded over his chest, glaring sulkily. Spezza approached him slowly, giving him time to react, but whatever Jordie had said to him was working, because he didn’t challenge or try to get away. 

Spezza leaned in, resting his head on Jamie’s shoulder, and breathed him in slowly, deeply. Then he turned his head and rubbed his cheek against Jamie’s jaw, slowly and patiently, before sliding up to graze his temporal gland over Jamie’s skin as well. 

It wasn’t musth, so the scent wasn’t heavy and sweet, just a faint tang in the air. By the time all the dominants in the pack Tyler had brought were done, though, the scent would fill the room, and they would all be breathing it in and bonding a little closer together. Especially closer to Jamie, reminding him of who his herd was and that his job was to protect and look out for them.

Right then, Jamie was still stiff and unhappy, pressed back against the headboard like he was trying to escape while Spezz pinned him in place with his weight. Tyler wanted to grab Jamie by the shoulders and shake him, tell him to just fucking relax and let his team back in. But if he did that, Jamie would probably take his head off, so instead he just nudged Sharpy to go join the two of them on the bed.

Sharpy straddled Jamie’s legs, then ducked his head and pressed it to Jamie’s chest so he was curled in on himself, breathing against Jamie’s chest. Jamie twitched and growled, but didn’t throw them off, and after a moment Sharpy turned his head and dragged his cheek across Jamie’s collarbone. Tyler felt the burst of scent on his tongue. God, this was going to be distracting.

One by one, the other dominants went to the bed and found a place to breathe and rub on Jamie. They shifted around, the ones who had already gone making room for the others without moving far enough away that the scent could dissipate. Tyler could see it starting to work on Jamie now; his eyelids were drooping and his mouth was open a little, taking shallow sips of air. 

Jordie went last of the dominants, kneeling next to Jamie and rubbing his face briskly against Jamie’s shoulder. “C’mon, buddy,” he said in a low voice. “Snap out of it, eh? That’s enough.”

“Just felt really bad,” Jamie mumbled. “M’head was all clogged up.”

“Clean it out.” Jordie rubbed on him again and then looked back at Tyler and the other non-dominants still waiting by the door. “Okay, guys. Come cuddle on him a little.”

“I don’t need _cuddles_!” But Jamie didn’t move when they came over and found ways to slot themselves in on the bed or the floor around it. Tyler wished he could get an overhead view of all of them together, a big tangle of limbs and bodies, warm and cozy and wrapped up in the heavy-sweet smell that meant team and love and _not going to try to kill each other for another ten months or so_.

He ended up lying with most of his body across the d-men and his head resting on Jordie’s hip. Even though the smell wasn’t hitting him in the hormones like the dominants, it was still nice and peaceful, being together like this. It felt like they were gonna get back on the right track. They were going to play together, as a team, a pack, a herd.

A hand settled on Tyler’s head, ruffling his hair slowly. Tyler twisted enough to see that it was Jamie’s hand, and he looked the rest of the way up to meet Jamie’s eyes.

Jamie made a face at him. “Yeah, okay, you were right. Shut up.” 

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were gonna.” Jamie squirmed around, trying to drag his limbs out from under bodies, then gave up with a huff. “I’m gonna be having pins and needles for hours when everybody leaves, man.”

“You wanted to be in charge,” Tyler said, closing his eyes and settling in with satisfaction. “That’s just how it goes.”


End file.
